Monday, February 22, 2010

As you know one of our kitchen resolutions for the past couple of years has been to buy more of our meat from local farms. Thanks to a Christmas gift from Matt's parents we are well stocked with beef & this weekend we added 1/4th of a pig to the freezer.

Back in September we visited Highview Pastures in Farmington, MN just 45 minutes from our house in Minneapolis. There we saw lots of happy piglets running in the grass.Highview pasture raises their pigs so they don't have the stress or crowding of conventional farms which means they don't need antibiotics or preventative medicines. We waited patiently for those piglets to grow up & be turned into tasty cuts of pork. Then made a trip out this weekend to pick up our butchered & smoked cuts.Do you think this guy knows we has a box full of one of his buddies in our car?

Now our freezer is full of nitrate & msg free bacon, sausage & ham as well a ribs, pork chops, pork steaks & a pork butt just calling to be smoked. Buying from directly from the farm is so wonderful, you know exactly how your pork was raised & what you are getting. Plus the cost is really quite reasonable, we bought 1/2 a pig & split it with a friend making it even better. Of course, I can never resist Michelle's farm fresh eggs while I'm at the farm. How pretty is that blue egg?

We got a nice show of tail feathers from the farm's turkeys while visiting too.

Barbara - The pigs seemed awful happy running around in the snow. One of the cool things about farm eggs is you get some many colors. I'm not sure if they only butcher the turkeys at Thanksgiving or not.

Catherine - I know what you mean but at least these pigs have a happy life & aren't squeezed into a factory farm!

Just the other day my four year old says to me, "Mom I like to eat pig (mainly referring to bacon), but I think pigs are cute. I dont want to eat pig anymore." I said that they are not so cute when they grow up and that they dont kill baby pigs. Then she was okay with that. I am pretty straight forward with my kids about it all. I dont want them growing up thinking food comes from a supermarket. They need to know their food a bit.

I really respect you and Matt for how much you do eat local. We do more and more but things like mangoes and bananas just send me!

I would love to have all those pork products. Some great feasts ahead I'm sure. Our farmer put a call out for half hogs a few weeks ago, but we weren't in the position to investigate options with the move. Next time though. Oh, and I just love that blue egg. How unique! You don't even need to color it for Easter. :)

Lori - One thing I love about this farm is they have a 6 year old son who totally knows what is happening with the animals. He calls the turkeys the "butcher turkeys." We do what we can locally but still want our banana every morning too.